Review: FORCE OF TRUMP, Brockley Jack Theatre, 12 October 2016

The impossible task Sami Ibrahim set for himself, as the writer of Force of Trump, is to satirise the unsatirisable - how can anyone exaggerate someone so determined to "go to 11" whenever there's a microphone in sight? At one point, The Donald (played with sleazy half-closed eyes and that hissing snakey voice by Chris Born in a Boris Johnson wig) insists that England is about to be taken over by Isis - a farcical assertion. But not four hours earlier, The Donald himself had told a baying mob at a campaign meeting that the USA would be taken over by Isis should Hillary Clinton be elected. Who can keep up with that level of madness?

Of course, this 60-minute show is timely and of course, it's stroking an audience who can't get enough Trump-bashing (and I should know - I'm one of them), but the target is so large, so absurd that the challenge is to drive home the humour without toppling into complete fantasy - no easy matter when your subject is the world's most notorious fantasist! It didn't quite locate that (admittedly tiny) space.

The show concentrates on President Trump's first visit to the UK. Having ordered - well, sort of ordered - the torture of British Muslim soldiers in Syria, Trump is held on Airforce One at Heathrow (fuming, ranting, seething) by Prime Minister Theresa May. With just his aide, a hard-nosed Thick Of It-inspired Lili Thomas, for company, it looks like The Ego has landed, but cannot leave the plane, and a siege could ensue. Suddenly, wouldn't you know it, news comes through that one of the soldiers was indeed linked to Isis and The Donald is proved right again! Having torn up the rulebook on one side of The Pond, he sets himself to do the same thing on the other.

The two principals are supported by Pheobe Vigor in a variety of roles and they keep the pace high with plenty of laugh-out-loud lines and horribly plausible outrages. And then, just as the gag begins to wear thin, we're done, and can check our phones for the latest news from the Great American Freakshow, knowing that it's almost certainly more bonkers than what we have just witnessed.

Force of Trump continues at the Brockley Jack Studio until 15 October.

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